Mozilla has just released Firefox 4 Beta 5 with faster graphics and audio capabilities for the web. The new features taps into HTML5 features to allow developers to work better with the browser, adds hardware graphics acceleration and also implements a new security protocol called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

With Firefox 4 Beta 5 Mozilla has added a new audio API to expose raw audio embedded between <video> and <audio> elements provided by HTML5 to read and write raw audio data within the browser, think like visualization of the audio with Windows Media player. You can read more about this feature at a Mozilla developers blog post here or watch the video embedded below.

In addition to that, Firefox 4 Beta 5 also takes advantage of the built-in graphics hardware in Windows computers with DirectX 10 to improve graphics performance. Firefox will use Direct2D by default on supported hardware.

Firefox 4 Beta 5 also adds a new protocol called HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) which allows websites to insist that Firefox always use secured connections. Firefox 4 will now remember which sites use the HSTS protocol and will always use SSL to pass data through those websites.

Visit the official Mozilla announcement for more information on Firefox 4 Beta 5 and download links.